Categories widget

Thanks so much John. That’s worked perfectly.

Can I tack on a follow-on question, not unrelated?

I’ve now hidden category ID 97 (“Collaboration by Design”) from both the dropdown and from the Masonary blog view that appears on the blog homepage. However, if I click on this post:

…the left-hand pager arrow that allows me to jump to the previous blogpost jumps to a post that is in category 97:

I can’t work out how to also exclude that category from appearing at all when clicking through the posts in that way.
(I the code below in functions.php to exclude the posts from my RSS feed, which is picked up by a MailChimp campaign:)

/* Excluding the Collaboration By Design category from the RSS feed so it doesn't get picked up by MailChimp
*/

function exclude_category($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('cat', '-97');
	}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

Thanks in advance.
Eoghan

Thanks John.

As it won’t let me redeclare “exclude_category”, which I’ve already declared in the is_feed above, can you tell me what the syntax is for adding this is_singular snippet to the code. Is it something like this?

function exclude_category($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('cat', '-97');
	}
return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

    if ( $query->is_singular(‘post’) && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'cat', '-97' );
    }
}
add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category' );

(I know what I’ve pasted above does not work, but I’m not sure how to fix it.)

Thank you again,
Eoghan

Hi John,

Thanks for your continued help with this. I’m afraid the code above is not working either. I have tried using just your code, and also that code with the filter added (in case that was having an impact on where it was called) as follows:

function exclude_category($query) {
	if ( $query->is_feed ) {
		$query->set('cat', '-97');
	}

	if ( $query->is_singular(‘post’) && $query->is_main_query() ) {
        $query->set( 'cat', '-97' );
    }

return $query;
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'exclude_category');

To be clear, while the “Collaboration by Design” category (97) no longer appears in the dropdown menu in the Categories widget, it is still being called when navigating through the blog using the next and previous post buttons. For example, on this page:

…the previous post is one from Category 97.

I’m wondering whether I need to be specifying that my exclusion request applies to the avia-post-prev (and -next) situations?

Sign-in details in the private box…

Thanks,
Eoghan

Hi Ismael,

Thanks for helping with this. Maybe it’s best if I explain from the start, but in brief:
– There’s a blog on the website, using multiple categories, here: https://brightgreenlearning.com/blog
– There’s also a blog, but using only one category (97, ‘Collaboration by Design’), here: https://brightgreenlearning.com/academy/collaboration-by-design
– I would like both the main blog (multiple catgories) and the single-category blog to be entirely separate from the visitors point of view. So I have managed, for example, to have a different sidebar show up on posts that are in category 97 and also to have that category hidden from the sidebar categories widget that appears on the main blog.

What I have not been able to do is to stop the post navigation at the edges of the screen from A) excluding category 97 when browsing the main blog and B) showing only category 97 when browsing the alternative blog?

I could potentially solve this by just disabling that navigation option altogether, but it does add some value for site visitors, so I’d rather keep it there.

@John Torvik tried helping me above, but the proposed solutions have not worked.

If you have any suggestions I’d be most grateful.

Thanks,
Eoghan

Hi Ismael,

I had not tried the code you suggested as it seemed to me that it would not deliver what I am looking for. I have now tried it and indeed found that to be case.
In the secondary blog that uses only one category (97, ‘Collaboration by Design’; here: https://brightgreenlearning.com/academy/collaboration-by-design) it works fine, with the page navigation limited to that specific category. (The posts in that blog don’t belong to any other category.
However, in the primary blog ( https://brightgreenlearning.com/blog) posts have multiple categories. The code you suggested (which I have left in place in functions.php for now) therefore means the page navigation jumps to the next post which shares one category with the current post, rather than the next oldest or newest post.
Is there some way of having that code apply only to the first of those two blog loops, but not to the primary, multi-category blog?

Thanks,
Eoghan